


Sugar

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Bering & Wells Holiday Gift Exchange, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21748573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: It’s December and I haven’t posted a Christmas story yet? What is the world coming to?!? Here’s my 2017 Bering & Wells Holiday Gift Exchange piece from Tumblr, written for @baeringandwells, who asked for “fluff, fluff, and more fluff,” plus longing, and allowed as how some Tracy Bering—perhaps meeting Helena for the first time—wouldn’t go amiss. This was initially intended as a sweet little artifact-driven adventure, but the idea that it should contain “longing” sent me in a fixit direction. Nevertheless, the title should make clear that there’ll be no holding back on glucose, fructose, or any other –oses. The holiday season’s for indulging, right?
Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells
Comments: 39
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

A year ago, Myka wouldn’t have imagined this Christmas Eve this way.

Parts of it would have been perfectly thinkable, of course: Artie, Steve, and Abigail all away on vacation. Pete and Claudia in beanbag chairs in front of the television, playing some video game featuring guns, cars, and unidentifiable creatures that might have been aliens or maybe zombies.

She wouldn’t have envisioned, however, that she and Pete would have, some months ago, made the huge mistake of thinking they could be more than friends. And she wouldn’t have believed they could then have found their way back to being, on the whole, the friends they’d been before making such a mistake. But miracles did happen.

Miracles did happen. Vanishingly rarely, though, and one miracle was unreasonable enough, so the idea of another… that was really not at all plausible. Myka might, in her most private thoughts, have wished for someone else to be present on this Christmas Eve. But she then would have stopped that line of imagining in its tracks by giving herself a stern lecture regarding what was and wasn’t possible.

And yet that additional miracle had indeed occurred: Helena Wells was in this very room, in an armchair, sipping tea and reading a book about blockchain technology. Myka would not have come up with Helena’s blockchain fascination on her own; ergo, this was not an eggnog-induced hallucination.

She’d arrived in early September. No warning or fanfare. No explanations, either, but as the days passed—as she stayed, and as the days passed—she seemed a bit more… herself? As each day faded, so did a little of that aggressively self-delusional Boone-Helena, and so did a little of whatever transitional-Helena version she’d become after that. Each day began with a brightening glow of the best of the Helena who had so captivated Myka at first: charm and wit and _fit_. She developed an instant rapport with Steve, and similarly with Abigail, which was a surprise, given that their relationship involved actual therapy sessions. She and Artie suffered each other, in a deeply odd, respectful way. She mentored Claudia (and vice versa in certain arenas); she tormented Pete (and also vice versa, in every possible arena).

How Helena fit with Myka… and vice versa… that was a different story. Or maybe it was an unreadable story, or maybe not a story at all; it was clearly not meant to be the story that—

Helena chose that moment to raise her eyes from her book and smile at Myka.

That smile was what made clear to Myka that whatever she wanted… a story or not, legible or not… she had to ignore it. Because for Helena to wear an expression of such ease? That, too, would have not long ago been unimaginable to Myka as something to see on this Christmas Eve. The last thing Myka should ever have dreamed of doing, now, was to make any move, offer any pronouncement, that would disturb that hard-won contentment. So Myka now lectured herself, with what seemed to be increasingly necessary frequency and harshness, about how inappropriate it was to hope for yet another miracle. _Stop dreaming about her_. Helena was herself. She was here, and she was herself. That had to be enough.

****

Helena had never cared much for Christmas. Certain traditional aspects were tolerable; certain others were not. And yet, given a choice, she might in fact have chosen to ignore all those aspects and spend the holiday just this way: witnessing Pete and Claudia play whatever mayhem-wreaking game in which they were engaged, while she herself pretended to read a book in which she would have been absorbed if not for the fact that Myka sat across the room from her, _not_ pretending to read a book, but rather actually reading a book. Which meant that Helena could do her own pretending a bit less rigorously; she could let herself look, with a little more attention if still covertly, at the woman doing the non-feigned reading, and enjoy the sight.

Myka must have sensed Helena’s surreptitious looking, however, because at that moment, she looked too. Helena gave in; she lifted her head and smiled. But she could allow herself no more than that.

Helena had come back because—she had more than once been exhorted by Abigail to be honest about this, and she did try, for she had come to trust Abigail—Myka told her to. In Boone, Myka told her to. It took time for the lesson to sink in, given that Helena had not wanted it to sink in, but such a time came when she could no longer deny its having sunk.

First, Helena tried leaving Boone. Leaving the child who—Myka had been right about this too—was not hers. But that was not enough.

She found a different life. Less conventional, less imitative of any of her past selves. Designed to distract.

Still not enough.

So she came back to the Warehouse, on the theory that there, at least, her professional purpose would be extant and clear. That, at least, was true. And she was glad to be with people who shared that purpose. Glad to regain a real measure of friendship and trust with Pete and Claudia, glad to become acquainted with the delightful Steve and Abigail. (Even glad, on some days, to talk, with purpose, to Abigail.)

“Glad” was inadequate, however, to describe her feelings upon being once again in Myka’s presence.

And yet every moment she spent in Myka’s presence, she heard that refrain, the one that seemed destined to follow her; she heard it more strongly as she endured each one of those present moments: not enough.

Not enough. But while Myka seemed not unpleased to be again in Helena’s presence, she had given no sign that she wanted anything more than a collegial… collegiality. All Helena could do, when faced with that, was collect the occasional flashes of comradely intimacy that she and Myka shared and stitch them together, against her better judgment, into a bright, ragged version of hope.

Other times, she admonished herself: “You imprinted on her. That is all. She has appeared to you, over and over, when you have been vulnerable and in need of a symbol of strength upon whom to fixate, and she is that symbol. And that _must be_ enough.” To which another, softer interior voice would respond, “Yes, but…”

And Helena would then be unable to arrest a fall into a reverie, one in which Myka was not merely a symbol of strength—not a symbol of anything, in fact, but only herself. A self with great strength to be sure… but one who might soften, might even melt into Helena’s arms, if Helena knew just the right words to say, and could follow them with just the right touch.

Bottling it all was intolerable but necessary; the equilibrium of the situation _had to_ be maintained, for she could not risk destroying everything, but most importantly Myka, again. She had considered telling Abigail, for Abigail would surely keep her confidence. But while _all she wanted_ was to speak aloud of it, even to shout, she also feared that to let the secret out in any way, even one so small, would be to make it no longer at all containable. Tell Abigail, and the floodgates might fail. That could not be allowed to happen.

Not _quite_ enough: that would have to be enough.

****

Myka had not read one single word of the book she held. She didn’t even know what the book she held _was_ ; she’d picked it up when she saw Helena absorbed in her latest blockchain tome, which for the past week she’d carried around constantly, as if it were a stuffed animal from whom she couldn’t stand to be parted… _anyone_ would have found that endearing, Myka was sure, so her own repeated surges of tenderness at the sight? Completely unremarkable.

She supposed she could _try_ concentrating, but she was really too busy considering how strange and yet wonderful it was to be stealing furtive glances at Helena, and to have those glances accompanied by a soundtrack of gunshots, tire screeches, threats and gloats between Pete and Claudia, plus some pounding noise that the game probably intended to be soothing background music… then her ears registered that part of that incongruous soundtrack was the bing-bong of the doorbell.

Helena asked, “Were we expecting someone?”

“Santa!” Claudia enthused.

“At two in the afternoon,” Pete said. “Doubtful.”

“The weather _outside_ is doubtful,” Claudia told him, “so he had to get an early start.”

Myka shook her head at all of them and went to open the door, bracing herself for the blast of doubtful weather and for what was likely going to be the regrettable task of turning away some unfortunate traveler who’d mistaken the B&B for an actual B&B.

She got the expected rush of face-freezing air. As for the unfortunate traveler…

“Hi, Myka,” said Tracy Bering. Who then burst into tears.

“Okay,” Myka said. She began to sense that this Christmas Eve was likely to take on a few more unimaginable elements… “Okay. Come in so I can close the door.” That sounded about as cold—and doubtful—as the weather, so she added, “And also so you can tell me what’s wrong.”

Myka closed the door behind Tracy, then turned around to find three different faces of curiosity. Pete’s was his standard “I don’t know what’s happening but let’s hope it won’t have an impact on dinner” expression; Claudia’s featured a strange squint of calculation; while Helena’s… Helena’s said, “This new person is apparently not a threat, but I will remain on my guard.”

And that realization brought Myka up short: Helena had never met Tracy. And vice versa. Helena had never met any part of Myka’s family. And vice versa. And Myka had not planned for this, had not considered how to _manage_ this.

And she would have wondered why she was this worried about Helena and Tracy, when of course Claudia had never met Tracy either… and vice versa… but Myka knew perfectly well why. She had, somewhere in her secret heart, felt that she and Helena were making some sort of progress. Or that they might start making some sort of progress, if every star aligned, with precision, alongside every other star, and if Myka herself did everything right. No mistakes, no misunderstandings, no mishaps.

But introducing any part of the Bering family into the precarious equation was likely to bring about all those and more.

“Hello, Pete,” Tracy hiccupped out. “And the red hair—you must be Claudia. Claudia, I’m Myka’s sister, Tracy. She probably hasn’t mentioned me, because she doesn’t. Oh, and here’s another person. Hello, other person. I want to make really, really clear that I’m not usually like this.” She sniffled.

“This is Helena Wells,” Myka hurried to say. She then hurried to add, “Sometimes known as H.G., because H.G. Wells. Get it?”

Tracy made her “I don’t understand you at all” face at Myka. “Why do you sound so concerned about that? I don’t care what you call her. Unless _she_ cares. Do you care, Helena, sometimes known as H.G., because H.G. Wells, which I do get, even though Myka thinks I don’t, because she won’t ever believe I know anything about anybody who ever wrote a book?”

Helena made a face that Myka couldn’t read. “Anyone may call me anything they like. Particularly you, Tracy Bering, whom Myka has indeed mentioned. I’m pleased to meet you. A bit surprised it’s happened this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” Tracy sighed. “Me too.”

Myka asked, “What happened? Where are Kevin and the baby?”

“She’s not a baby anymore. She’s almost two.”

“Fine. Where are Kevin and the toddler?”

“I took her to see The Nutcracker, the ballet, in Denver.”

“And left her there?” Pete yelped.

“That doesn’t account for whoever, or wherever, this Kevin is,” Claudia offered. Like she wanted to point it out to be helpful.

“Kevin’s her husband,” Myka said.

Tracy said, with determination, “Not anymore he’s not. That’s why I’m here: I left him.”

“You left Kevin. And your daughter?”

“I took her to the ballet,” Tracy said, with careful enunciation, as if otherwise it would go over Myka’s head. “And when we got home, Kevin asked how it was, and I said it was wonderful, and he said he didn’t understand why anyone liked a ridiculous thing like that ballet, and I can’t explain it, but that was the last straw. I told him it was over, and I left.”

“Wow, a _breakup_ ,” Pete said. “One that comes _out of thin air_. Must be a family trait.”

Myka raised her hands at him, trying to convey _This is not the time for jokey recriminations_. And he might not even have meant it as a joke, given his extremely sour tone, but she had no brain space to deal with any resurfacing bruised feelings. “But Tracy,” she said, “why are you _here_? Why didn’t you go to Mom and Dad’s?”

“They’re on that cruise,” Tracy said.

This was news. And also new. “Our father, and our mother? On a cruise? A cruise on a boat?”

Tracy shrugged. “I thought it was a little weird too, but speaking of family traits, I guess this just means you and me, we’ll start doing weird things in a few decades, too.”

Pete snorted. “The good ship Myka Bering Does Weird Things? Sailed.”

“Pete!” Helena snapped, before Myka could. “Now is not the time.”

“Thanks,” Myka said. Helena’s smile in response was a gentle beam; Pete’s eye-rolling frown the exact opposite.

“You know what,” Tracy said, breaking the tension, “if I could freshen up. The tears weren’t exactly planned.”

****

As Tracy Bering disappeared up the stairs, Helena wondered how she might determine whether she had made a sufficiently decent first impression on this representative of Myka’s family—and, if insufficient, how she might correct that. She then tried to convince herself that the sort of impression she made on any member of Myka’s family was most likely inconsequential in any larger sense—and then her thoughts were interrupted by Myka rounding on Pete, demanding, “I know this isn’t my fault, so _what did you do_ , and why is it affecting my sister?”

Pete protested, “It wasn’t me! I haven’t touched anything in days! I mean except for stuff everybody has to touch, like the floor, or themselves.”

“Oh, please,” Myka said, and Helena heard Claudia, beside her, utter a quiet “Ew.”

“I meant like scratching your head,” Pete said.

“Pete,” Myka said, in the tone that Helena recognized as her attempting to be reasonable, “it’s Christmas. When things happen on Christmas, you’re the most logical suspect.”

Pete said, “In mysteries it’s never the most logical suspect who did it!”

“What kind of mysteries do you read? It’s almost always the most logical suspect who did it!”

“I don’t read _books_ , so how would I know that! _Movies and TV_ are obviously for smarter people than _books_ are, because people who watch movies and TV, like _me_ , can imagine _other_ suspects.”

“Well if it wasn’t you, then who was it?” Myka challenged.

“There is literally an entire planet full of suspects.”

Myka put a hand to her forehead, as if to ensure that her brain would remain in place. “It is very nearly _literally_ unbelievable to me that this is the one time you have ever used ‘literally’ right.”

At that, Helena laughed. Pete gave her a look that managed to combine a shrug and a preen; he then turned back to Myka and said, “Maybe it isn’t artifacty at all. Maybe your sister just happened to break up with somebody. Maybe it actually _is_ a family trait.”

“Her husband is not just _somebody_!”

“Oh, right, but _I_ am.”

“Don’t you dare get sulky with me about that! And besides, comparatively? Tracy and Kevin are _married_. I kissed you a grand total of four times.”

 _I hate the number four_ , Helena’s heart decreed immediately.

“You _counted_?” Pete whined. “Who _does_ that?”

“Someone who is not meant for you and who you are not meant for!”

“You sure got that right!”

Helena leaned to Claudia and murmured, “Such an unfortunate involvement.”

Claudia murmured back, “You _literally_ don’t know the half of it, H.G.”

“True. On the ‘fortunate’ side of the ledger, I didn’t witness the majority of said involvement.”

“The full horror.” Claudia shuddered. “Anyway, at least that part’s over.”

What an odd statement. “Is there another part?” Helena asked.

Claudia nodded. “And I’m waiting like for the next Star Wars movie, out in the cold, on the sidewalk, in my sleeping bag in my lawn chair, because at this point all I can do is buy a ticket like every other mortal and hope and pray that it’s no Phantom Menace, although really I think the part that’s over now was way worse than that. So whatever’s next can’t possibly be that bad.”

What a concatenation of odd statements. “What?”

“Uh. Pretend I didn’t say any of that, okay?”

“Given that I understood none of it, other than the phrase ‘Star Wars movie’? Agreed.”

“You’re the best. And that’s why there’s no way it goes all Jar Jar, regardless. Fingers crossed it’s even better than Empire.”

“Strikes Back!” Helena declared, pleased to have for once understood a popular culture reference. “So you _are_ talking about Star Wars films.”

“Not really, but I’ll say yes anyway.”

“Statements are so rarely about what they are about,” Helena said, and she was not sure if she was telling that to Claudia, or reminding herself of it, or simply engaging in empty philosophy to distract herself from her newfound antipathy toward the number four and also from the no doubt indelibly terrible first impression she had made upon the only member of Myka’s family she was ever likely to meet.

Claudia put a hand on Helena’s shoulder and leaned, for just a moment, against her. They didn’t, in the main, do physical contact, either of them, nor overt sentimentality, but Claudia said, “Here’s a statement that’s about what it’s about: no matter how the next part turns out, I like that you’re here.”

“Well,” Helena said. “So for Christmas, here’s another that is: despite the fact that I still don’t know what you could possibly mean, a great deal of the time, I would have to say, I like that I’m here as well.”

“Hey, look, they calmed down,” Claudia said of the Myka-and-Pete scene that continued to play out before them.

Pete was saying, with newfound, or newly regained, equanimity, “Maybe I just don’t like being _reminded_. It’s not like it was some big picnic for me either, okay?”

“Okay,” Myka said.

“Just like that?”

“Well, you’re right. I snap about it sometimes too. We were both such idiots.”

Claudia broke in with, “You really shouldn’t beat yourselves up like that.” To Helena’s ears, she sounded rather plaintive.

Myka must have heard her that way too, for she said, “Someday you’ll understand, Claud. Relationships, particularly when they don’t work out, are—”

“No, I mean _you_ really aren’t the ones who took the fun out of dysfunctional, if you know what I mean.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Myka said.

“Awesome,” enthused Claudia.

Helena reflected that Claudia seemed to be working very hard to ensure that her statements were not about what they were about. What they _were_ about, however… Helena couldn’t quite find her way to that. Not yet, at any rate.

****

Myka did now and then let herself remember an incident from not long after Helena’s return. As she was remembering, she tried also to remind herself that Helena had chosen to come back, that she came back for herself, and not to save Myka from her mistakes. But that was what Helena had done: she had come back, and Myka found that she could not be in a room with Helena and at the same time maintain a belief that she wanted to hold Pete’s hand.

Holding his hand would have been easy. But Helena’s presence had brought to the front of Myka’s mind all of her lingering awareness that what seemed to be easy was rarely right. The gathering of that knowledge made her sit up straighter—made her realize that she hadn’t been sitting up straight, not for a long time; her shoulders had been folding farther and farther forward, every day.

The breakup itself wasn’t bad, as such things went. They hadn’t progressed much beyond their awkward initial kiss and an even more awkward first “date,” and when Myka told Pete she thought they should probably rethink the whole idea, he crumpled a little, but then he recovered and said, “Yeah, I kind of figured, and I kind of figured that you kind of figured too,” and Myka said, “That sounds about right,” and they didn’t exactly agree in so many words to never try it again, but they both seemed to kind of figure that they wouldn’t.

The very next morning, Myka had gone running, as usual, and she had expected to stand alone afterward in the still-dark kitchen, also as usual, to drink water and get her breath back. But Helena was up incongruously early, fully dressed, oddly animated. “Are you feeling all right?” Myka asked her.

“I can’t answer definitively,” Helena said. “But I suspect that this may at least approximate how ‘all right’ feels.” She gave Myka a closer inspection. “And yourself? You seem different this morning.”

“Different how?”

“I can’t answer that definitively either. What I will say is that your run appears to have done you good. Other mornings, it’s seemed to tire you—although I’m sure it isn’t my place to say that. Or to notice it, so if—”

“Pete and I aren’t together.”

Helena closed her mouth. She made an interrogative noise.

Myka said, “It’s fine. No, better than that.” Saying it, meaning it: better, even, than she’d expected.

Another little closed-mouth, questioning murmur.

“Really,” Myka said, and she smiled, just because she felt like smiling. Smiling at Helena. “And I think my run did do me good.” Still smiling, she said, “I should go shower. But you’ll still be here when I come down for breakfast, right?”

Helena kept her mouth closed for a moment. Then another. Her mouth was closed and her eyes were focused on Myka’s and the moments threatened to stretch… but then she said, “I believe I will. I’ll even scramble you an egg or two, if you like.”

Any breathlessness Myka felt was obviously a lingering effect of her run. “That sounds like good fortification. For facing the day.”

“Indeed,” Helena said, and now she was smiling too. “For who can say what this day will hold?”

They hadn’t had so light and lovely an exchange since Helena’s return. And that one wasn’t their last—by no means their last—but it was first, and Myka cherished it. Helena was _there_ , and that they could talk like that, alone in the kitchen in the early morning? That was _good_.

The idea that there could be something even better? Myka had to discipline herself not to think it.

But if she had, on that light and lovely morning, not yet begun to exercise such strict discipline, and she had let her mind wander to a different sort of interaction with Helena, one that also combined light and love… well, she tried not to remember any of those wandering particulars.

****

To Myka’s eyes, Tracy looked much more like herself when she came back downstairs—though she would have, just based on the fact that she wasn’t crying anymore. In Myka’s experience, Tracy didn’t cry; back when they were kids, she’d cried even less than Myka, yet Myka had been the one who prided herself on her stoicism.

Helena, of course, didn’t know any of that; she asked Tracy, “Are you feeling better?” Myka could hear a slight formal sheen to the words, but also something more solicitous, genuine: Helena liked Tracy. Myka hadn’t expected to be relieved by that, but there it was, a relief. Helena liked her sister.

Tracy said, “Still not happy with my soon-to-be-ex-husband. Missing my daughter.”

Myka tensed at that, but Helena said, with what seemed like unfeigned calm, “Of course you are. She’s nearly two? Quite the combination of joy and pain, that age.” She cleared her throat. “I would imagine.”

“I keep hoping that once we get through the worst of the teething, things might settle down.”

Helena coughed the beginning of a laugh. “Settle differently, certainly. Do you know how you were as a toddler?”

“According to my mother, I was awful. But Myka was perfect—Mom says she never threw a single tantrum, always did what she was told, seemed grown up already by the time she was _three_ ,” Tracy said. “‘Why can’t you be more like your sister’ was all I heard from Mom till I was at least eight or nine years old.”

Myka looked at Helena and Tracy interacting, and she thought, _This is what I want_. She had never had such a thought, not fully formed. She hadn’t _considered_ Helena in relation to her sister, to her family. Not once. But Tracy _was_ her family, and Myka was now imagining Helena as not separate from that. Not required to be held apart from that.

Helena and Tracy, smiling at each other conspiratorially as their conversation turned to Myka, then turning surprisingly similar gazes toward Myka: Tracy’s face displayed something that Myka had always been inclined to interpret as judgment-laced affection, and she sighed to think that Helena’s might be read as the same thing… affection was probably all right, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t strong enough to upset anyone’s balance.

But then Tracy’s gaze took on an appraising squint. She looked from Myka to Helena and back again. Then she said, “Myka, can we talk for a minute?”

And now the judgment would come. But, okay, Myka was an adult now, one who was handling things just fine; she could be nonchalant about whatever Tracy thought she knew better than Myka about. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s make some tea or something.”

Pete said, “You already have eggnog. Besides, you don’t like tea. Much.”

“Don’t be dense,” Myka told him. “We’ll make it for whoever wants it, even if it isn’t me. Helena, for example.”

“She already has some,” he pointed out.

“Maybe she wants some _more_ ,” Myka said. Was he playing some game where the object was to tick her off as much as possible?

“That would be lovely,” Helena said.

 _Don’t grin at her_ , Myka told herself. _Whatever you do, don’t grin_. But it was like trying to fight a sneeze…

In the kitchen, Tracy started with, “You know I don’t like to get into your business.”

“That is completely untrue,” Myka said.

Tracy ignored her. “Historically, though, you haven’t had all that much business for me to get into.”

“That, on the other hand, is completely true,” Myka conceded.

“And yet all there seems to be, here, is business. You _insisted_ there was nothing between you and your partner Pete.”

“I know.” Myka focused on taking the lid off the teapot, filling it, fiddling with the stove.

Tracy didn’t speak again until Myka had run out of other things to focus on. Then she said, “And yet clearly there _was_ something between you and your partner Pete.” Like she resented it—well, no, this was Tracy, so what she resented was that she hadn’t been _informed about it_.

“I know that too. But there isn’t anymore.” At that, Tracy did the head-tilt. The “you better say more than that” head-tilt. “Look, I wasn’t lying to you when I told you there wasn’t anything, because there wasn’t. Then there was, because I was a fool, but then there wasn’t, or I mean, now there isn’t. That’s it. You’re up to speed.”

“There wasn’t, but then there was because you were a fool, but now there isn’t,” Tracy recited, and Myka nodded. Tracy said, “Do you want to change that? Back to the middle part, I mean? Because being a fool and being in love are sometimes pretty much the same th—”

“They are absolutely not. And all I want to change back to, in this universe or any other, would be a time when it hadn’t happened.”

“That’s probably good, given my next question: this Helena person—”

“What does that mean, ‘this Helena person’?” Myka demanded, despite knowing exactly what it meant.

“Her name is Helena and she’s a person. Don’t be so weird about everything.” Myka rolled her eyes, but Tracy presented her with a blank expression and went on, “So my question is, what about this Helena person?”

“What about her?”

“Myka, I understand that you and I haven’t always gotten along. And I accept my share of blame for that, I really do. I was overly fond of being popular, you were underly fond of being popular, and I didn’t even try to meet you halfway.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your saying that.” And Myka did appreciate it. She knew she was going to have to accept her own share of blame at some point too, because what Tracy said about not trying to meet halfway? Well, Myka hadn’t made much effort in that direction either.

“You’re welcome. But my point is, your tendency to pretend like we didn’t in fact grow up together? To act like I know absolutely nothing about you? It’s _really_ getting old.”

“Helena and I are friends.”

She hadn’t expected that to stop Tracy, but weirdly, it did. “I don’t doubt that,” Tracy said. She seemed to mean it.

“So are we done here?” Myka asked. This seemed too easy…

And then it came: a challenge, delivered in exactly the same tone Tracy would have used as a teenager when she wanted to taunt Myka into revealing… whatever Tracy thought needed to be revealed. “That depends,” Tracy said. “What would Helena say if somebody asked her about this Myka person?”

“Oh, look, the water’s boiling,” Myka said, with as much self-possession as possible under the circumstances. She turned to the teapot on the stove, and she heard Tracy sigh. She aggressively ignored that sigh as she assembled cups of tea.

****

When Helena had returned to the Warehouse, she had maintained a baseline hope that no one would ask about Boone and its consequences. Particularly, she had hoped that Myka would not ask, because she did not know what to say: “I was a fool” would have been the most true statement to make, but she did not know whether she could in fact make it. Out loud. To Myka.

In the event, she could not. The one time Myka had seemed to be beginning to broach the topic, Helena flinched. She was honest, but in a cowardly way: “I would rather forget that episode,” she said.

In response to that, Myka backpedaled with truly impressive speed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, and I won’t—but you talk to Abigail about it all, though, right? I mean any… repercussions. Or—that’s the wrong word. Probably. I just hope you don’t _regret_ that you—”

“That I came back?” Myka’s wince was a clear yes. “Myka. I would make this choice again, over and over again, wholeheartedly.”

Myka’s smile at that. Her smile. Surely Helena had seen other people smile before, but in that moment, she could recall witnessing no facial expression that conveyed comparable joy. Conveyed it, in the most literal sense, to Helena, such that she could not help but let it suffuse her too.

“Speaking of forgetting episodes,” Myka had then blurted, “it was a mistake. Sorry: I mean, me and Pete. A mistake, and I don’t know why I made it. Proximity? But that’s no excuse for a mistake.”

Helena knew that she had been told that for a reason—but to _ask_ the reason seemed rude. Invasive, certainly right after Myka had practically tripped over herself in her hasty retreat from any invasion of Helena’s reasons and their aftermath. Aftermaths.

So Helena instead turned it over and over in her head, and she settled on an overall reasonable interpretation: Myka wanted to make very clear that while everyone did make mistakes—Helena, of course, and even Myka herself—they both should guard against making any additional, similar errors.

Yes, that interpretation was reasonable, and altogether the most safe. And if Helena wanted to imagine that Myka had meant something more encouraging? Well, that was what imagination was for, was it not? Taunting oneself with visions of wonders that could never be…

Do not hope, she told herself. Do not hope, and do not pray. You live here now with a peace and grace that you do not deserve. Carry on, if you must, with your torturous imaginings that you might be granted more… but do not dare believe, not for one moment, that you _should_ be granted more.

****

The drinking of tea seemed to be going well, such that Myka started to relax. Just a tiny bit. She was sitting on the sofa next to her sister, and Helena was on that sofa too—all the way on the other side, but that was decidedly for the best—all very familial and holiday.

Naturally, she regretted her relaxation when Pete said, “Tracy, I don’t mean to be snooping, but people like to say stuff is my fault, so if you could confirm for the room that I had nothing to do with whatever’s up with you.”

This could not possibly go well.

“Honestly?” Tracy said, and fortunately she didn’t start sniffling again. “Everything seems to have happened because I got it in my head that I wanted to take my daughter to the Nutcracker, like our mother took me and Myka.”

Myka said, “I remember. We were so little.”

Tracy sighed and said, “I loved it.”

Myka snorted and said, “I hated it.”

Tracy raised the mug in her hand, as if to toast. “And there you have the story of our childhood. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen; Myka had nightmares for weeks.”

“That whole second act,” Myka said, “with the dancing cookies and candy canes… it went on forever. It was horrifying. I’m pretty sure that’s why I don’t like sugar.”

Tracy raised her mug again. “Myka quit eating sugar; I started taking ballet lessons. Also the story of our childhood.”

“And,” Myka said, pointing at her sister, “you were so good at it, you got _cast_ in the revolting thing, so I had to keep seeing it. Three years running. I dreaded the Christmas season.”

“How do you think Mom felt about it? She had to get me to eight performances a week, in costume.”

“I remember that year when you were… what was it, the gingerbread cookie? That was the complicated little bodysuit, right? Poor Mom.”

Helena said, “Not your father as well?”

“Dad hated it,” Tracy told her. “Ignored it.”

Myka nodded. “Dad’s very good at pretending things don’t exist.”

Tracy looked at Myka, who was to her right. Then she looked at Helena, who was on her left. Then back at Myka. “So are you, Myka,” she said.

Myka tried very hard not to look, across Tracy, at Helena. She realized that by doing that, she was proving Tracy’s point, so she did then look at Helena. Who was of course smiling again. Myka considered whether it would be rude to ask Helena to please stop looking at her that way, that her resistance was low, what with Tracy trying so hard to make her say things out loud. That there was only so much Myka could reasonably be expected to withstand, and she was rapidly approaching that limit.

Helena saved her by saying, “You’ve certainly piqued my curiosity regarding this Nutcracker, for I don’t know it… well, I know the Hoffmann story, but I don’t suppose I know it as a ballet.”

“But I thought it was old-timey,” Pete said.

Myka said, “It’s more nineteen-fifties old-timey, not eighteen—whoops. What I mean is, it’s not as big in England as it is here.”

“Oh. Gotcha.” He winked at Myka. Then he winked ostentatiously at Helena, and Tracy had clearly noticed _that_ , so Myka jumped in to remark that Claudia was being awfully quiet and maybe she had some thoughts on the Nutcracker to share with the class.

“Me? No thoughts. I’m having zero thoughts right now.”

Helena said, “I don’t believe you. You look as if you might be attempting an entirely mental construction of a proof of whether a particular indicator function is Riemann-integrable. Or some similar cerebral gymnastic feat.”

“The way you can read me so right is just spooky. Can you do that with everybody? Try it on Myka.”

“You are trying to distract me,” said Helena.

“If it works, then yeah.”

Helena gazed at Myka. Directly into her eyes, and Myka once again wanted to explain that a person could endure a lot, but at some point that person was going to give up, push her sister out of the way, and do something that would make this Christmas Eve even weirder and probably impossible to recover from. Then Helena blinked, breaking the gaze just enough. She said, “She is thinking about the Nutcracker, and how much she dislikes it.”

Myka said, “What if I told you I was thinking about…” And then she realized she could not possibly say, even in jest, that she had been thinking about leaping at Helena and plunging her hands into Helena’s hair and—absolutely not. Catching sight of Helena’s book, she managed, “Blockchain?”

Helena tossed that hair over her shoulder, as if she really could read Myka’s thoughts. She said, her voice matching the sly gleam in her eyes, “I would say you should prove it by explaining its theoretical underpinnings to the room.”

Myka raised her own mug in tribute. “You win. I’m thinking about the Nutcracker, and how much I don’t like it.”

“Good call,” Pete said. “Also your dad probably isn’t wrong; I gotta think no guy would ever like it.”

“Why not?” Tracy asked.

Pete shuddered. “That title. Also the things themselves are creepy. And do they even really work?”

Helena, still sly, said, “To crack nuts? You are asking whether nutcrackers work to crack nuts?”

“Stop saying that.”

“Stop saying ‘nutcrackers’? Or stop saying ‘to crack nuts’?”

“Knock it off!”

“Oh, fine. But the _implements_ are in fact effective.”

“That’s the worst news I’ve ever heard in my life,” Pete said. Then he shook his head, hard, like a dog trying to dislodge a tick. “Maybe it’s just because H.G.’s making me think bad thoughts, but I feel weird. Do you guys feel weird?”

Myka said, “No. I refuse to feel weird.”

“Agreed,” Claudia said. She looked, with suspicion, around the room, then announced, “There will be no weird feelings. Your sister’s here under slightly weird circumstances, but we are still having a mellow Christmas Eve. Laid-back. Calm. Not at all weird.”

“And yet something is happening,” Helena said. Apologetic, like she couldn’t help saying it…

“No it isn’t,” Myka repeated.

“I feel like it is,” Pete said, and his voice sounded farther away…

“No it isn’t,” Myka said again.

Claudia, farther away still, as if she were talking through a tin-can telephone: “I don’t know whether to hope this has something to do with the thing or not. But seriously, why does… something… always…”

“It _isn’t_ ,” Myka maintained.

Tracy said, “Except they might be right? What—”

The next thing Myka knew, she was hearing music. Loud, orchestral music. Everything around her felt different, from the clothes on her body—including her shoes—to the smell of the air. They had decided on no tree this year, just to keep things easy… yet now she smelled a fir tree. She smelled a lot of fir tree. Suggesting the presence of a very large fir tree.

“If I don’t open my eyes,” she said—loudly, to be audible above the music, and ideally to drown it out and make it go away—“then nothing has happened.”

“If that’s your story,” she heard Claudia say. “But if you don’t open your eyes, you’re likely to trip over a dancing doll.”

“What?” Myka opened her eyes. Closed them. Opened them again. Sighed. “Great.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 1 tumblr tags: you'll probably guess where our intrepid cast of dopes has ended up, poor Myka, (or maybe not 'poor Myka' when we get to the end of it all), (we'll see...)


	2. Chapter 2

An enormous fir tree indeed dominated the space into which Myka and the others had been transported, or which had replaced their normal surroundings, or whatever kind of non-natural thing had happened to turn a vaguely normal Christmas Eve into… no. No, no, no.

But then Myka saw Helena. She wore a uniform of some kind, a red swallowtail coat featuring gold buttons and braid and epaulets, while on her head perched a tall black-and-gold top hat/crown thing. Her face displayed unnaturally heavy makeup that elongated her jaw in a way that seemed designed to suggest…

“No, no, no,” Myka said aloud, but she was afraid it could no longer be denied. “Somebody tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

“What does it look like?” Helena asked. “A Christmas scene, orchestrally accompanied, in which one finds dancing toys, including toy soldiers, and… mice? And you seem to be wearing a nightgown. Charming, but not generally how I picture your sleepwear. Not that I have pictured it. Of course not. There would be no circumstance in which—” She cleared her throat. “In any case, as for myself…” She looked down at her arms, at the gold-buttoned front of her coat. Raised her hands to her head and touched her hat. “Fascinating.”

“That’s one word for it,” Pete said.

Claudia said, “I wouldn’t be pointing fingers, man. What’s with the ears and the tail?”

That made Pete whip his head around to regard his rear end, to which a tail seemed to have been tied; his ears, too, sported attachments that made them look bigger. More animal.

“Best guess,” Myka said, “given that there’s also a crown? He’s the Mouse King.”

Pete reached up, took off his crown, and held it up in front of them all. “Lookit that! Royalty! Good for me! But how do you know I’m a mouse?”

“Because,” Myka said, and she briefly entertained the idea that if she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true... but she of all people knew that never worked. She sighed and gave up: “Helena’s the Nutcracker.”

Pete snickered. “Appropriate.”

“You should be happy that I am not in actuality such an implement,” Helena said, “given the effectivity I believe I mentioned earlier. You should also be happy that you do not have seven heads.”

Pete had nodded enthusiastically at her first statement, but in response to the second, he cocked his head in question. “Kind of a random thing to put on my ‘thrilled-about’ list.”

“The Mouse King has seven heads in the Hoffmann,” Helena informed him. “I concede that would be a difficult effect to achieve in a ballet, which I presume, given the music and the abject horror on Myka’s face, this is.” She turned to Myka and said, “My most sincere condolences.”

Claudia said, “Waitaminute. Who am I supposed to be?” She fluttered the edges of the cape that draped her shoulders.

“I think you’re Drosselmeyer,” Myka told her. “He’s Clara’s—or, I guess _my_ —godfather. He’s the one who made all the dancing toys, and the Nutcracker too, as Clara’s Christmas present. He’s a little creepy.”

“Goals. What about Tracy? Nothing’s different about her outfit.”

Tracy stood at the side of the… was it a stage? The side of the _space_ , whatever it was, and she said, with a hint of a pout, “No costume? I’ve got to be somebody who isn’t in the ballet.” She perked up. “Maybe I’m Balanchine! Or Tchaikovsky!” But then she pouted again. “Probably just the narrator, though. Helps the kids in the audience follow the story… because a lot of them want to, unlike Myka, who was always too busy being traumatized.”

 _No kidding I was traumatized_ , Myka thought, and then: _Tracy_. _Oh god_. “Okay,” she began, but she could barely speak; her breathing thinned and shallowed and she thought she might pass out, because what explanation would she give for this? “Tracy,” she tried, “this is a really vivid dream you’re having. You fell asleep, and that is what this is. Okay? That’s _all_ this is.”

Tracy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say. But I’m going to assume that that’s about as true as your unconvincing story of how a tornado destroyed my nursery.”

Pete said, “But also, your pregnancy hormones made you not remember the tornado. That was an important part of the unconvincing story.”

“Right,” Tracy said, poker-faced. “I’m just saying that if this were actually a dream, I don’t think any of you would care so much about trying to figure anything out. Because I, as the one having the dream, would already know.”

Helena laughed. “Tracy, I find you to be not unlike your sister, in some rather salient respects.”

Myka said, and as she spoke she realized Tracy was saying the exact same thing with the exact same intonation, “Is that good or bad?”

Helena pronounced, “And upon this evidence, my lord, I rest my case.” Said to a presumably nonexistent judge, but Myka wasn’t feeling entirely safe about any presumptions at this point.

“The Case of the Similar Siblings,” Claudia offered.

“Hey, why are we never in an episode of Perry Mason? That’s a great show,” Pete said.

Clearly, being rodent royalty did nothing to tamp down his ability to be annoying. “What a great idea, Pete,” Myka fake-enthused. “Start throwing out suggestions of new ways to crazy up our lives. I mean, why not ask why we’re never on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick?”

“Because I don’t want to be on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick. You wouldn’t want it either. You wrote a check to some ‘save the whales’ group two weeks ago; we all saw you do it.”

“My _point_ was that nobody wants to be in anything.”

“That’s so untrue. This time of year, I’d kill to be in _Die Hard_. Besides, you were pretty happy to be in that detective-noir-thingy, weren’t you? Or maybe you changed your mind, because it turned out _not_ to be a love story after all?”

He’d moved closer, practically in her face. Why was he being so confrontational? For that matter, why was she herself being so confrontational instead of trying to figure out how to get them all out of this?

Myka opened her mouth to ask, but Helena preempted her with, “I have a different question, one that may be slightly more pertinent: am I indeed expected to lead the dancing soldiers into battle against the dancing mice? The troops seem to be looking to me for choreographical guidance.” It was true; small soldiers shuffled their tiny toy feet as they turned hopeful little faces toward their Nutcracker commander. Helena spread her palms helplessly at them, then looked to Myka and Tracy.

Tracy said, “I don’t know how ‘my’ dream is supposed to work. I’m guessing that you people are way more experienced with things like this, and tornadoes. But it does seem like a good idea to follow the plot, doesn’t it?”

“Very well,” Helena said. “Be advised, however: I cannot dance.” She proceeded to prove that. Myka wasn’t sure how she felt about dancing being the one thing Helena Wells wasn’t able to do with preternatural skill… Helena seemed to be performing some unholy cross between hopscotch and a waltz, though the hopping was mostly a product of her attempts to avoid stepping on the soldiers and mice, none of whom stayed in formation. That in turn, of course, was the fault of their respective leaders, and Myka hadn’t expected to discover, not on Christmas Eve, that neither Helena nor Pete, who now marched with the mice, was capable of guiding an army of tiny creatures in terpsichorean combat. You really did learn something new, or several somethings new, every day.

Claudia had her arms crossed, watching the mayhem. “I have a really boring part in this show,” she announced.

Myka said, “I’m wearing a nightgown.”

“I give,” Claudia said. “Your part’s worse.” Her expression changed from grumpy to thoughtful. “I really feel like this is not what was supposed to happen. Or maybe it was, but I wonder why so trippy?”

“ _Supposed_ to happen? _You_ did this?”

“I didn’t do _this_. At least, I didn’t think _this_ was what I was doing.”

Myka could not imagine that a more frustrating group of people existed. Anywhere. “Not. For. Personal. Gain. Why aren’t we all required to have that tattooed somewhere visible?”

“It isn’t for personal gain! It’s for general Warehousical gain! Well, maybe a little bit of personal gain, just as a byproduct, but I swear to you, artifact usage is not involved here.”

Pete shouted, from the battlefield, “But why would you do _anything_ at Christmas? You know how Christmas makes the Warehouse—whoops, hey Tracy, I mean ‘some storage facility’—lose its mind.”

“The thing I did, I didn’t do it at Christmas,” Claudia said. “And I didn’t even really _do_ it. Plus there wasn’t really a single ‘it’ that was done. By me or by anybody—I mean, any _thing_ —else.”

Tracy said, “I’m sorry to interrupt all this _clearly_ very important dream exposition, but Pete, you need to attack Helena.”

“I what now?”

“You’re the Mouse King,” Tracy told him. “You fight the Nutcracker, and you do it now, given the music.”

He brandished the sword he was holding. “Okay by me. H.G., you game?”

“I… suppose? En garde?”

Under other circumstances, Myka would have found Helena’s puzzled regard of her sword adorable. As it was, though, she was holding the blade completely wrong, so Myka went to her and moved her arm into a slightly more appropriate position. She asked Tracy, “Why couldn’t I be one of the ones with a weapon? I’m the only one who can actually fence.”

Tracy said, “You sort of do have a weapon, and you get to use it, but you have to let go of Helena first.” Myka dropped her guilty hands. Tracy went on, “Now you hit Pete with your shoe. To distract him.”

“Well, it’s no epée, but: with pleasure.” She took off her shoe—a dainty little ballet slipper that she probably couldn’t have taken a decent fencing stance in anyway—and whacked him over the head.

“That all you got?” Pete taunted, but now he seemed more silly than annoying.

“Now, Helena, the sword!” Tracy urged.

Helena squinted at the sword again. “I would say ‘with pleasure’ as well, but I don’t actually want to hurt him. Today.”

“We’ll do the thing where you ‘stab’ between my arm and my body,” Pete suggested, “and then I can finally do the death scene that wins me the Oscar.”

“Dance it. You have to dance it,” Tracy said.

Pete looked even more excited. “Dance it? Yes _ma’am_. You can all thank me later for the colossal moves I’m about to bust. Best Christmas present you’ll ever get.”

The moves Pete busted were “dance moves” under only the broadest definition of the phrase, in that he was moving, and the music continued to play. He spun; he shimmied; he sashayed; he struck poses. When he started in with what Myka was pretty sure was intended to be breakdancing, Claudia groaned, “My eyes. My sad, sorry eyes.”

Helena remarked, “The Nutcracker, having done this murderous deed, would feel such remorse that he, or rather I, would naturally turn his, or rather my, eyes away. Don’t you think?”

“Coward,” Myka said. “Look on his Works, ye Mighty, and despair. I know I am.”

“You don’t appreciate anything old school,” Pete grunted out, while attempting to hop on one hand. He fell over with a crash.

“She appreciates _everything_ old school,” Tracy corrected him.

Myka wanted to say, “Definitely one thing—one person—who is _very_ old school.” That one person who was _very_ old school had accepted Myka’s challenge to keep watching Pete, and Myka let herself spend a moment enjoying Helena’s face as she worked to hold back what had to be either nausea or laughter. At last Helena gave up, and once she had allowed herself several low chuckles, she caught Myka’s eye and said, “He’d have been perfectly justified to laugh at me as well. And he does at least have great enthusiasm.” Myka had to agree: Pete did always _commit_. No matter what…

His commitment ended with him stretched out on the “stage,” twitching to show that the last of his mousy life, or maybe the horrified spirit of Terpsichore, was leaving his body.

Tracy said, “Pete, that’s enough. Next step: Myka and Helena, get in that bed over there.”

“Tracy!” Myka yelped.

“Don’t be a prude. It’s in the ballet.”

Myka said, “I’m not being a prude.” And she wasn’t, not a prude, just a person who couldn’t stand the thought of getting something she wanted but not _really_ getting it…

“You’re always being a prude,” Tracy said. “Get in the bed. It’s totally innocent: Clara’s just sleeping with the Nutcracker.”

Pete said, “That doesn’t sound innocent. That sounds like this ballet’s about to get all—”

“Pete!” Tracy interrupted. “You are not helping.”

Claudia remarked, “It’s weird how often people named Bering say that.”

Myka heard them, but hearing was her least important sense right then; far more worthy of her attention were sight and smell and _touch_ —and taste, she wanted that too, but she couldn’t be that bold. She settled for resting her head on Helena’s epauletted shoulder, feeling the warmth of her skin through the stiff-collared neck of the coat. She sighed.

She might have imagined it, but she thought she felt Helena’s chest rise, fall; heard a heavy exhalation: was Helena sighing too? And then she didn’t care, for a red-sleeved arm found its way around her shoulders.

“In _bed_ with you.” The words left Myka’s mouth of their own accord.

****

“In bed with _you_ ,” Helena breathed in response to Myka’s words.

Helena closed her eyes, let the strange, wonderful sensation of bodily peace have its way with her. _Oh, Myka, don’t move; don’t ever, ever move_ , she thought, but then: _Or, better, move only to be closer to me; move only to put your mouth on mine…_ she felt such thoughts might become speech, might already have become speech, here in this unreal realm…

Then, though, she had a sensation of awakening… but Myka’s head was still on her shoulder… and Helena knew, then, that that sensation was perfect. The caress of her hair, the warmth of her breath. If Helena should turn her head, and if doing so should join their lips, how surprised Myka might be—but how soft her mouth. How soft and warm and wanted… and if Helena were very lucky, how _wanting_. Because each moment of this dream, no matter its dreamer, was leading Helena to stronger hope. If her eyes could remain closed, if she could continue holding Myka to her, perhaps she could maintain that hope—

“I can’t see,” she heard Pete complain. “Why’d it get dark?”

Tracy said, “First act curtain.”

“What happens next?” Claudia asked.

“Myka’s favorite part,” Tracy said, and in her voice was a note that reminded Helena greatly of Myka, but only at her most playful…

“Oh god,” Myka said, removing herself from Helena’s embrace, and she sounded _not at all_ playful, “it’s the—”

“Land of Sweets!” Tracy crowed. “Is it wrong of me to be really entertained by this?”

“It’s your dream. Knock yourself out,” Myka said. She let herself fall back against Helena’s shoulder, and Helena rejoiced. Then, tragically, Myka sat up. At that point, Helena opened her eyes, just in time to see Myka stand up.

Helena reluctantly followed suit… and thus they were no longer in bed together.

“I’m in a different outfit,” Myka said.

“So you are,” Helena said, for Myka was indeed wearing not the modest, girlish nightgown of the previous act, but a more traditional ballet costume, with a silvery, bejeweled bodice and a skirt of pale pink gauze. Then Helena realized: “So am I.” Hers, too, was more obviously ballet-suitable: a rather princely doublet and breeches, all white.

“I sort of miss the uniform. You looked dashing,” Myka said.

“Do you think so?”

“I haven’t ever seen you in a uniform before. Also the hat. It really worked for you.” She turned her eyes away, as if sudden self-consciousness were the price of such statements of appreciation.

That made Helena, in turn, bold. “I shall never again go hatless,” she said, but instead of declaring it, she whispered it. Into Myka’s ear, which pinked.

Tracy said, “Interesting. Doubling the parts.” They all, Helena included, looked at her in question, and she went on, “Small companies sometimes do that.”

“I guess we’re a pretty small company,” Claudia said.

Tracy crossed her arms and regarded the new setting. “Although I’m not sure why we need anybody playing any parts, here in this _dream_ I’m having, if mice and toy soldiers and cookies actually _can_ dance. Those are real pieces of chocolate jumping around to the Spanish Dance, aren’t they? Maybe you crazy people are right; maybe this _is_ a dream.”

“It. Is. A. Nightmare,” Myka said, and Helena did believe that from Myka’s perspective, that was absolutely true: candies of many sorts danced before them—some seemed a bit disappointed at the less-than-enthusiastic response they were receiving from the small Warehouse “company”—and sugar saturated the air, from which the occasional powdery granule seemed to spontaneously precipitate. Pete stuck his tongue out in an attempt to catch some as the rest of them continued to regard the dancing confections.

Claudia said, “Dream, nightmare; I think it’s none of the above. I think we’ve been put on hold, in some cosmic sense. I have never been so bored. It’s all just dancy-dance-dance.”

“Now, now,” Helena admonished. “Even if you have no appreciation for Tchaikovsky, consider the poor marzipan’s feelings.”

Pete gave up trying to catch sugar in his mouth. He complained, “What about _my_ feelings? All I feel is hungry. Particularly since my super-aerobic dance of death. I should make workout videos.”

“I should get an insulin shot,” Myka said.

Claudia nodded. “No lie. I feel like I’ve got sugar in my _hair_. Gross. Here’s hoping maple syrup shampoo never becomes a thing.”

Myka said, to her sister, “See, Claudia understands.”

Tracy was listening to the music, her head cocked. “Myka, I really hate to break this to you, but…”

“But what?” Myka asked, in the tone of one who feared that Tracy did not in fact hate the news she was about to break.

And indeed, Tracy began to laugh. “You, sister of mine, are the Sugarplum Fairy. Merry Christmas, sweetie.”

Myka began muttering, “I think you really are dreaming, and I think it’s some kind of revenge fantasy thing where you get back at me for that time I hid your toe shoes, which I _apologized_ for, twenty-five years ago, and yet here you are, still holding it over my—”

“But in what _might_ come as positive news,” Tracy said, in a conciliatory tone, “Helena seems to be your Cavalier.”

“That’s _awesome_ news!” Claudia enthused. “Probably.”

“They’re going to dance a pas de deux here in a bit,” Tracy told her.

“Even. Awesomer. Again, probably. One question: is it, you know, all romantical?”

Tracy nodded. “Basically the only really romantic thing in the show.”

“Sparkly.” Claudia looked to the heavens and pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.

Helena said, “I myself am not finding fault with the situation. But is there some reason _you_ are having such an excessively positive reaction?”

Claudia pointed her pressed hands at Helena. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve sussed out what’s happening.”

“You have determined that your function is Riemann-integrable,” Helena tried.

Tracy remarked, “And here I thought it was me, having a dream. A _revenge_ dream.”

“It is,” Myka said, with no cheer. “And in your dream, Claudia has sussed out what’s happening and Helena’s doing a callback to something that wasn’t funny the first time. And now everybody can wake up so I can get out of this Sugarplum outfit and brush my teeth.”

“I don’t think we can wake up yet,” Claudia said. “Because here’s how I think we get out of this: you dance that dance that’s the only romantic thing in the show. And you _mean it_.”

“What do you mean, ‘mean it’?” Myka asked.

“What do you think ‘mean it’ means? It means _mean it!_ ”

 _Mean it_ , Helena thought, and she said, “Ah. Ha. Really?” She fought to keep her face from revealing her eagerness for that romantic dance—she would mean it; she could not help but mean it; and the extent to which she would mean it would be so readily apparent—

“H.G., you look like you’re gonna throw up,” Pete announced. “And hey, so does Myka.”

Helena noted that Myka’s face did seem to be fighting with itself, much as Helena’s own must… and she should not hope it might be for the same reason, but she did hope it all the same…

Tracy said, “That is _not_ what Myka looks like when she’s about to throw up.”

“It’s what Myka looks like when…?” Claudia prompted.

“When it’s Christmas morning and she’s unreasonably terrified that she might get what she wants. She’s good with anticipation. Terrible with actual attainment.”

“Tracy, you should do it,” Myka said. She looked down at her body, touched the gossamer skirt. “I can’t dance. You can dance, and I can’t.”

Helena regarded that hand, resting on that skirt: it was shaking. She wanted to take it, raise it to her mouth, and kiss it. Instead, she said, “Perhaps in a dream you can.”

“But what if I can’t? What if it’s important to be able to?”

Helena tried to keep her tone light. “If that is the case, Pete and I have doomed us.”

“I don’t want to be doomed at all,” Myka said, and her voice gathered strength as she went on, “but in particular, I don’t want to be doomed by doing a dance about sugar in a ballet version of a fairy tale I don’t even like. That’s literally adding insult to injury.”

“I think you’d be doing a dance _as_ sugar,” Tracy told her.

“Indignity to insult to injury. I really think you should do it instead.”

“There is no production of this ballet in which the narrator dances the pas de deux,” said Tracy. She could sound quite starchy when she wished to… Helena imagined that Myka must historically have responded rather poorly to that. But then Tracy’s voice softened. “Besides. There’s no reason for _me_ to dance with Helena.”

“There’s no reason for me to either!”

“Isn’t there?” Tracy asked, and the starch was back.

“There shouldn’t be!” Now Myka’s eyes were wide, and her body seemed poised on the edge of movement, as if she might take off running, just to get away.

 _If only we could have stayed in bed together_ , Helena thought. Then she might have been able to maintain a belief that that was what they both wanted, that it was not anything from which Myka felt she needed to escape. “Perhaps there should be such a reason; perhaps there should not,” she said, then looked to Claudia. “I may be mistaken, but I believe it is time for you to make some statements that are about what they are about.”

Claudia swallowed, and possibly she was the one experiencing nausea now. “Are you sure?”

“As mentioned, I may be mistaken. So of course not,” Helena said.

“Good point.” Claudia sighed. “Okay, see, one of the things that the Caretaker’s supposed to, uh, _do_ , which I personally did not know, prior to, you know, Caretaker Bootcamp, is to make sure that the agents… you know.” She fluttered her fingers.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, and Helena was certain that for once, he was speaking for them all.

“You know,” Claudia insisted. “Make sure they… get along. In the ways that would be best for them to… get along. But the thing about Mrs. F is, she kind of had… let’s say, some old-fashioned ideas. About who would. Or should. In what ways. And she and the… storage facility, they spent a lot of time and energy engineering… an outcome. But that was a major oops, because general wrongness. So anyhow, after some conversations about what’s what, which let me tell you I never expected to have to be the one explaining, some things got… put back. But then obviously there was, you know, another thing that needed to be addressed. So here we are.”

Myka shook her head. “That was… incomprehensible.”

Claudia shrugged. “So much for subtlety. Mrs. F thought you and Pete, right? And so she and the storage facility set up dominoes to maneuver that into happening. But obviously, big no on _that_ , so we fixed it. But just as obviously, another… uh. Situation. Needed to. Let’s say develop? And that was my job.”

“You’ve been trying to get Myka and H.G. together,” Pete said.

“Right.”

 _But why take such a long way round?_ , Helena wondered. She did not have to ask aloud, however, for Pete saved her the trouble. He scratched his head in puzzlement and said, “In the weirdest way possible? Was that part of the bootcamp? ‘Whatever you do, do it weird’?”

Waving her hands at him, Claudia shouted, “If the whole thing happened to be entirely up to me, I’d just hang some mistletoe and say ‘Now smooch!’ Actually I wouldn’t even bother with the mistletoe, because why wait? But I’m pretty sure you know just as well as I do, bootcamp aside, that if it’s the storage facility running the show, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than just turn around three times and spit. Also I might not have full control of the dominoes yet, okay? Do you have any idea the kind of inbox situation I’m dealing with here?” Her gestures had escalated in intensity throughout this recitation, leaving her panting as she finished.

“But what if this is wrong,” Myka said, and Helena ached to think that she did believe it to be wrong. “It was wrong with Pete; I _knew_ it was wrong.”

Claudia said, “I told you, Mrs. F blew that one. It _was_ wrong.”

That did nothing to lessen Myka’s evident despair. Helena could not stand to let her think that Helena herself harbored any reservations, regardless, so she said, “I don’t want anyone, least of all myself, forced into anything. Having already been placed into many circumstances not of my choosing. But—”

“See?” Myka said.

“ _But_ I don’t care. I do want you.”

“And I want you, but—”

“You do?” Helena could scarce believe her ears; if that were true, then why the despair?

“Of course I do. Wait— _you_ want _me_?”

“Of course I do.” She had never said anything more true.

“But what if this isn’t even what _we_ want? What if it’s just what the Warehouse wants us to want?”

“I could not possibly care less,” Helena said, and she meant it. “What I do care about are the fascinating ways in which articulating the words ‘what’ and ‘want’ make your mouth move.”

“Don’t charm me. I don’t know what to do when you charm me. And I told you, I can’t dance. I can’t.”

Helena said, “Then don’t think of it as dancing. Tracy, tell us what narrative purpose this interlude serves in this ballet.”

“The Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier… it’s generally thought of as a way of modeling romance for the young Clara, or if the same ballerina’s dancing both parts, letting her experience romance in its most perfect form. An ideal representation.”

Helena turned to Myka. She said, as gently as she could, “Providing an ideal representation of romance—that, we can do. Can’t we?”

Myka didn’t immediately answer.

And now Helena did not intend to sound desperate, but she knew she would… “Please say yes. I don’t care about the Warehouse and what it does or doesn’t want. Please say yes.”

Myka did not _say_ yes. But she did take a step toward Helena, and Helena’s heart leapt. But then: “I don’t know what to do,” Myka said.

“You might swoon for me,” Helena suggested lightly.

“I’m not much of a swooner,” Myka said back, not quite as lightly.

“It’s true that your spine and shoulders are somewhat rigid.” Helena put her hands on those rigid shoulders, as if to test them. But instead she let her warm hands rest on Myka’s nearly bare, yet incongruously warm, skin.

Myka gave a small shrug to her shoulders, and Helena tensed; did Myka want to shake her hands away? But Myka said, “Then again _you_ could swoon for _me_.” And she moved her own hands to Helena’s waist, seemingly to support her, should her body indeed collapse.

“I fear it would seem overly theatrical,” Helena said, as a tease.

Myka smiled. “We’re in the middle of a fake Warehouse-contrived ballet, and you’re worried about seeming overly theatrical.”

This smile was one more of play than of joy, but Helena found it transporting all the same. She leaned close to Myka, so close, such that she was once again speaking directly into her ear. “What about this,” she said. “I want to kiss down and up again the length of that straight, strong spine.”

Myka’s hands tightened on Helena’s body. “You win. That might make me swoon.”

“And then breathe against the nape of your neck,” Helena said, for good measure.

And now into Helena’s ear, so close as to make Helena’s very skin vibrate, Myka said, “If we were not in the presence of witnesses, so help me god.”

Helena said, after a throat-clear, “And yet I have heard that you are always a prude.”

Myka shrugged again under Helena’s hands. “Tracy and I did grow up together, and she does know _some_ things about me. But she doesn’t know everything.”

“No one knows everything,” Helena said, with an intentionally casual answering shrug. “So it should be hardly surprising that we two extremely intelligent, well-educated women might not be able to execute a perfect pas de deux. But… shall we make some attempt?” And now she did remove her hands from Myka’s shoulders and instead raised her arms, offering them as if to lead one of the partnered dances her parents had insisted she at least attempt to learn as a girl: right hand at waist level, left hand raised to receive the lady’s right. The gentleman’s role had seemed so much more compelling then, and was doubly so now, as Myka, despite her protests that she knew nothing, moved into the hold as if she, too, had been subjected to such lessons. “All I can remember, even vaguely, are the waltz and the polka,” Helena said. “Is this a waltz?”

“It’s probably not a polka, and I know in a waltz you count to three. Let’s give it a try.”

Surprisingly, then, they began to waltz. Their slow three-count had nothing to do with the music, as far as Helena could tell, but that could not have mattered. _Mean it_ , Claudia had said. _An ideal representation of romance_ , Tracy had said. At this moment, Helena had never _meant_ anything like she meant her heartfelt hold of Myka’s body, and she could think of no model for romance more perfect than herself and Myka, counting to three in unison, trying unsuccessfully to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, looking down at their feet, looking back up again into each other’s eyes, smiling, looking away…

Helena heard Claudia say, “They _really_ can’t dance.”

“Not at all,” Tracy agreed. “And yet…”

Helena did not dare break her count, or her concentration, but she suspected Claudia was nodding her own agreement with Tracy’s implication.

Myka was the one to break, though, for she said, “Did you hear Claudia? She said we can’t dance. I _told_ you—”

“Then stop trying, and kiss me instead.” Helena had thought to say that as a tease. An absurdity: of course Myka would not kiss her, not here, not now.

But Myka did not hear it that way, and the way Myka heard it? That was how Helena had indeed meant it, and she understood Myka’s anxious words in response: “I thought we were _supposed_ to dance. Besides, this shouldn’t be how we—our first—”

“First doesn’t matter.” So now, now, let the first be now… “No one kiss will matter—all of them will.”

“All of them…”

“Yes,” Helena said, with conviction. “All of them. The entire… what should the collective noun be? An osculation, perhaps?” She could do this, could give Myka a moment to think, to consider, to decide—to remember—that _any_ first need not, and in the case of their own interactions, had not, set the tone and tenor of all that would come after.

Myka took that moment. Then she smiled and said, “A canoodle.”

Helena countered with, “A prurience.”

“That’s a little too lascivious. And don’t say ‘a lascivity,’” Myka added quickly. Then she tried, “An amatorium?”

Helena considered. “Not quite. I propose that we continue these attempts presently. At which time, I will emerge victorious.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself. What if I come up with the winner?”

Tracy asked, seemingly of no one in particular, “Is this part of their representation of ideal romance? Or are they like this all the time?”

Pete said, “They do not know how to shut up about this kind of thing. Never have. Storage facility didn’t maneuver ’em into _that_. Then again that’s probably what they think romance is.”

“I don’t have to bother figuring out what a storage facility called ‘the Warehouse’ has to do with anything, do I, because at some point I’ll ‘wake up,’” Tracy said. “Right?”

“Or something about hormones,” Pete assured her.

“Fantastic. Look, just tell me Helena isn’t going to hurt my sister.”

Helena tensed, waiting for Pete’s response. Pete took his time in answering, but he finally said, “I don’t think I can tell you that. I mean, she did before.”

Points for honesty, at least. Helena looked to Tracy, Pete, and Claudia and said, “Never again. I swear, never again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tracy warned, and Helena did not doubt her intent.

“Hey,” Myka said, “I think that should be my line. But I’ve got a revised version: don’t make promises if you don’t intend to keep them. I know there’s no knowing what will happen.”

Helena said, “There is indeed no knowing. For I would have wished—but would not have dared—to consider a Christmas Eve on which I would be dancing with you.”

“We’re not even dancing,” Myka said, and it was, as far as it went, the truth. They were no longer moving, and Helena’s arms around Myka were no longer positioned with any formality.

But as far as it went, it did not go far enough. Helena said, “It is the oldest dance imaginable. And we are beginning it.” She paused. “Are we not?”

Myka said, simply, “Yes. We are.”

The kiss was surely no revolution in the art: their mouths moved together with a gentle yet intensifying pressure, and what innovation could she and Myka bring to such an old, simple action? Well, one at least, for what other perfect match of lovers could lay claim to having been separated by a century—then, after closing that gap, having waited still more years for the match to be made?

Such an old, simple action, and yet it carried such meaning, serving as both a culmination and a beginning… once begun, though, they did not stop, until they had kissed again, and again, and again, and once more. Helena drew back a bit and breathed out, “Five.”

That made Myka draw back slightly too. Puzzled: “That’s not a very creative collective noun.”

“But it is more than four.” Helena did not intend to brag, but it was objectively the case that five was more than four.

Myka laughed a small laugh, one that said she understood. “Okay. Six,” she said, and made it true.

“Seven,” Helena sighed, after she had made _that_ true as well.

They were engaged in eight when Helena heard Pete say, “I think it’s working. Are we waking up?”

A veil fell again, a slow darkening followed by a slow brightening. And there they all were again, back in their old familiar living room, but in a newly familiar position: Helena’s arms were still around Myka, and Myka’s mouth had just left hers, and Helena tried to tell herself that waking up would be all right, that they would make the best of whatever happened; but she could not now imagine being satisfied to return to that stasis that had been not _quite_ enough.

The floodgates had failed.

****

 _Should I move?_ Myka asked herself. She and Helena were locked in an embrace, and Myka felt her pulse in her suddenly lonely lips, felt it as a beat that wanted to push her forward to meet Helena’s mouth again. But they were in the real world now, and what if waking up again, here, meant that nothing had changed?

As if Tracy had read Myka’s thoughts, she said, “It _is_ all a dream of course.”

Myka stepped away from Helena’s arms. She didn’t look at Helena’s face. “Of course,” she said. “Of course it is. I mean, I’m so glad you think so.”

“I mean in the ballet, you idiot,” Tracy said. “That whole second part, about the Land of Sweets: Clara dreams it.”

Now Myka did look at Helena. Bleak, soft, sad: her eyes reminded Myka of her haunted hologram gaze, that gaze that knew so deeply how punitive her unreal body was. A constant “look but don’t touch” taunt… and Myka did not know if Helena understood that Myka, too, had felt it as punishment.

But a real body stood here now. “Then I don’t see why she—I mean I—would ever want to wake up,” Myka said. She took Helena’s right hand in both of hers, raised it to her mouth, and kissed it.

Helena made a small noise—disbelief?—but she put an arm around Myka’s hips and looked a question at her. Myka nodded. Helena said, “Then you should not have to. Wake up, that is.”

“Even though it’s too sweet for you?” Tracy asked, and her skeptical tone was clear. “In all the ways, I would’ve thought. Based on your… history.”

Helena, obviously emboldened by the location of her arm, exclaimed, “Tracy Bering, are you attempting to talk your sister out of this? Or are you simply making certain?”

“ _Trying_ to make certain. I’m getting that it’s important. I’d like things to work out the way they should, because I’m betting that if they do, I get to go home and everything will turn out okay. It’s like with Dad and that haunted book or whatever it was.”

Myka blanched. “How do you know about that?”

Tracy rolled her eyes and said, “Because I talk to our parents, Myka. You should try it sometime when nobody’s about to die.” Her tone became nonchalant. “You might want to try it sometime soon, in fact, because I bet you’d rather be the one to tell them about Helena… and you know how bad I am at keeping a secret…”

Helena, exclaiming again: “Tracy Bering, are you now attempting to blackmail your sister into visiting your parents?”

“I’m just making statements that are true. What Myka does with them is up to her.”

And now Helena was laughing. “Tracy Bering. You are a Christmas gift I did not expect.”

“Hey! What am I exactly?” Myka said, and she hadn’t expected to be possessive, but: she put her own arm around Helena. And pulled her close.

Helena’s smile turned incandescent, but her voice was familiarly sly as she said, “If recent events are to be believed, you are my sugarplum. And/or fairy.”

Claudia spoke for the first time, as if she were trying out her voice to make sure it still worked. “H.G.,” she said, and coughed, “if you don’t make the dingy-ding-ding part of that song your ringtone for her, I will lose all respect for you.”

Pete chimed in with, “We all should have that as our Myka ringtone. ‘Is the Sugarplum Fairy calling you, Pete?’ ‘Yes. Yes she is.’”

“I’m strangely comforted by all of this,” Myka said.

“Are you really?” asked Helena.

“Well. It pretty much shows that nothing’s going to change.”

“Nothing?” Sly again.

“One thing. A very important thing.” She leaned her head against Helena’s neck.

“Two things,” Tracy said. “Don’t forget about Helena meeting the parents.”

“The parents of Myka and Tracy Bering,” Helena said, and her tone was one of “what manner of creatures are these.” “Hm. These parents, who named their elder child Myka Ophelia Bering, and their younger, Tracy… Desdemona Bering?”

Tracy laughed. “Oh, good guess. But no.”

“Portia?” Helena tried, and Tracy shook her head. “Bianca?” Another negative. Helena twisted her lips one way, then the other. “Surely it couldn’t be Cleopatra.”

“I wish,” Tracy said.

“Why couldn’t _mine_ be Cleopatra?” Myka griped. “Do you know how many times people have told me ‘get thee to a nunnery’?”

“Please don’t,” Helena said. “For I would be obliged now to come and liberate you from it, and I really don’t need to add to my offenses against religion. And the religious.” She turned back to Tracy. “It certainly can’t be Helena.”

“No, but you’re getting warm,” Tracy said.

“Hermia?”

“Still warm…” Tracy said, and she winked at Myka.

“Here it comes,” Myka agreed.

Helena pounced. “Ha! In the fairy realm, one Bering a sugarplum, the other a queen: Tracy Titania Bering. Observe _you_.”

“H.G.,” Claudia said, “it’s ‘look at you.’ Or ‘get you.’ ‘Observe you’ sounds weird.”

Tracy said, “I like her version. In fact I like _her_.”

“So the Wells mojo works on all the Berings,” Pete said, but he didn’t sound completely like himself. Myka put a mental post-it flag on that so she would not just not forget it, but also come back to it.

“If there is any such thing as Wells mojo, I would much prefer it work only on one particular Bering.” Helena emphasized her point by kissing Myka’s cheek. Myka reciprocated. It was _ridiculously_ satisfying.

“That’s okay by me,” Tracy said. “If I’m lucky, Kevin will remember that he likes one particular Bering too.”

That made Claudia say, quickly, “I’m sorry, Tracy.” She put her hands in her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders; she might as well have been captioned “embarrassment.” “The whole thing, all the straight-up lunatic reasons for it all… I’m also sorry that I’m technically not supposed to explain _why_ I’m sorry, but I’m really really sorry. If it helps, I think if you’re not mad at your husband anymore, he might not have much of an idea that you ever were.”

Tracy waved the apology away. “Myka’s involved, so the reasons can’t help but be lunatic, and it’s not like I’ve never been furious at Kevin before today. But no matter how my little not-exactly-breakup works out, it does bring up one thing that our ideal lovebirds over there need to remember: the honeymoon ends.”

Claudia said, “I guess not today, though. Gotta say I’m a little surprised how strong the ‘mean it’ mojo carried over.”

Helena had been nosing against Myka’s neck, but now she raised her head and asked, “And how are you finding this part, Claudia? That is, if I have interpreted your previous metaphor correctly.”

“Don’t get yourself carbonite-frozen, is all I ask,” Claudia said.

“I have had enough of enforced immobility, thank you.”

Tracy said, “Then I think you should try movement instead.”

Myka was not particularly proud of how quickly her mind took that and went south—and then she was further flustered by Helena’s saying “What?” with a level of startlement that suggested she’d had the same thought.

Tracy started laughing. “Good god, your faces. I meant you should take a dance class.”

****

The entire rest of the evening, Myka let go of Helena only once: she went to the kitchen, where Pete was hunting through the refrigerator for food he hadn’t yet introduced himself to. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” he asked, his head still inside the appliance.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Mrs. F should apologize. We were both bystanders.”

“Not innocent, though,” she said, to the back of his head. “You committed. I didn’t.”

He didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.

“You’re going to freeze your face,” she told him.

“I’m not in the freezer,” he said, but he did stand up and close the door. “I’m sorry too.”

“What for?”

“I committed. You didn’t. Should’ve told me something, right?”

“I don’t know what should’ve told either of us anything.”

He turned to face her then. “You and H.G.” He puffed out a breath. “You look good together. I don’t just mean you’re both pretty—I mean you _are_ —but you look good _together_. You look _right_. Sound right, too. You did, even before. _That_ should’ve told everybody everything they needed to know.”

“Nobody here seems very good at paying attention,” Myka said.

“Well, Claudia is. Mostly. And Steve. Abigail too.” He sighed. “The newbies. Maybe the rest of us have been here too long.”

“‘The rest of us’? We just spent Christmas Eve in a ballet because ‘the rest of us’ apparently can’t be trusted to run our own lives,” she told him, and he huffed the start of a laugh. That seemed like a good sign, so she went on, “What I’m really saying is, you better stick around, because I need your help.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, and he turned back to the refrigerator.

“No, I mean I need your help _right now_. Helena and Claudia are explaining to each other why the Warehouse database should be made out of blockchain. Or something. And if they run off to the storage facility tonight to make _that_ dream a reality, I’m holding you responsible.”

“You got some _other plans_?” he asked. And then he waggled his eyebrows.

It was all going to be all right. They’d probably still have a hiccup or two or several, but it was all going to be all right. “I didn’t spend Christmas Eve in some stupid ballet for no payoff, Lattimer.”

****

A year ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve this way.

Pete and Claudia were still engaged in their video-game duel, although at considerably reduced volume… Tracy Bering had retired to the guest room after a long telephone conversation with her husband, whom she still loved, and who still loved her…

As for herself and Myka: alone now, in a darkened room, in a bed, continuing their dance…

There was no suggestion, on either of their parts, that they “take it slow”; no angst-ridden worries as to what the morning would bring; no hesitation at all—and if that was due to holiday disinhibition or the knowledge that there truly was no time like the present or even just the flat simplicity of two eager, tender adults willing and able to indulge their bodies with what was wanted, Helena could not have said.

What she did say, in a dark quiet moment right as Christmas Eve was becoming Christmas morning, came in response to Myka’s whispered, post-indulgence question, “And we’re sure this is real?”

“I hope so,” she said. Then, “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t expect an act curtain to fall, but your sister is right, of course: the honeymoon does end.”

Myka stretched her straight, strong spine—the length down and up of which Helena had indeed kissed. She said, “If it does, then we’ll just have to have a second one.”

“I had no idea you would be so romantic,” Helena told her. For Myka had indeed been romantic—she had said unabashed words of love, and of want, and Helena had answered them in rapturous kind.

“I didn’t either. Maybe it’s some aftereffect—excessive sweetness. It’ll probably wear off.”

“I suspect we’re likely to have more problems if it doesn’t wear off than if it does. As you’ve no doubt noted, I’m not especially sweet myself.”

Myka said, “I beg to differ,” and she kissed Helena again and again and again, as if she had found a secret fount of edulcoration, as if she could not get enough of all that her mouth encountered…

Much later, Helena murmured, “Torturous journey,” as she let her fingers trace an easier, smoother one across Myka’s collarbones.

“And we didn’t even know it was one. Not while we were on it.”

Helena sighed. “Blame the storage facility.” She paused. “Not a sentence one expects to utter.”

“ _Do_ you care? If we’ve been… nudged? Pushed?” Myka’s hands had been moving too, over Helena’s back, sliding over scapulae, then moving to Helena’s shoulders, down her arms. Now they stilled, waiting.

Helena sighed again. “Nudged, pushed. Flung? Away from each other, now toward each other. I care only that it took so long for the storage facility to get it right. I don’t appreciate the detours.”

“For my sanity, I’m just going to pretend that the storage facility isn’t as influential in everyone’s business as it apparently is. But I have to say, I think my parents are going to wake up tomorrow morning pretty confused about why they booked themselves on a cruise.”

“And yet they might enjoy it. Opinions can change, in the event. For example, how do you feel about The Nutcracker now?”

“I don’t want to tell you.” She shifted a bit, abruptly awkward under Helena’s weight. “You’ll take it the wrong way.”

Helena slid fully off of Myka’s body, turned on her side, and propped herself on her elbow. “You continue to find it your worst nightmare,” she guessed, though it seemed more a certainty.

“I can’t help it. I still can’t stand it—and I don’t understand why the storage facility had to stick us in that sugary horror show anyway.”

“Hm,” Helena said.

Myka said, with apology, “You’re thinking the honeymoon’s over right about now, aren’t you?”

“That is not at all what I am thinking. I am considering two questions. First, which of us, you or myself, has no objection, philosophical or otherwise, to the consumption of sweets?”

“You…” Myka said, but now with suspicion.

Helena chuckled. “And second, which of us was cast as the Sugarplum Fairy… the one who, we might say, is _made of_ sugar?”

Myka closed her eyes. She made the same hand-to-forehead gesture she had, so much earlier in the evening, with Pete: as if she were attempting to ensure that her brain remained in place.

Helena, greatly satisfied, continued, “Thus I am thinking that the storage facility stuck us in that sugary horror show in order to indicate that I should—”

The hand that had been at Myka’s forehead moved swiftly to cover Helena’s mouth… but Myka smiled.

****

No, a year ago, even a day ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve–become–Christmas morning this way. Even if she had, she would have told herself that such satiety could never be more than the stuff of fantasy… the stuff of sweet dreams.

But even the sweetest of dreams sometimes come true.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 2 tumblr tags: I would apologize for the joking around at the end, but I swear to you I tried to land the piece at least six different ways, and they all refused to avoid going there, so I felt I had no choice, blame the storage facility, anyway hiya 2018, let's see whatcha got, I know there'll be some Bering and Wells, certainly from me, and I hope from everybody else too, here's to sugary dreams, for them and for us


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